If you're ready to stretch your reserves to make a large down payment, or at least eke out 20 percent, you should consider:

What you probably shouldn't do is get a personal, business or, heaven forbid, a credit card loan. Turn to these only if the property is a "must have" and you expect to accumulate enough cash to pay off these high interest rate bruisers quickly.

The key is to understand that with a large amount of your money going into the house, you've got an advantage. Lenders want to loan you money because they're more confident you'll repay the loan, and sellers are more amenable to making deals.

Use the cash as a lever in your negotiations. Get the lender to shave an eighth to even half of a point off your loan's rate. You may want to even consider paying an additional point or two to whittle the margin down even further.

If the property you seek is for investment purposes, you can buy it with money in your Individual Retirement Account without running into early withdrawal penalties. Open a self-directed IRA account with any of the trust companies that administer such accounts. Such administrators can issue a certified draft for the purchase of the property that doesn't count as an IRA withdrawal, so long as the property is purchased in the name of your IRA.

The Internal Revenue Service has sanctioned the following real estate and real estate-related investments for IRA-administered purchases:

The cash flow from renting or the capital gains you accrue upon the sale are deposited in the IRA, and are tax-deferred. When withdrawn after age 59╜ or by age 70╜, the money is taxed as ordinary income. In this way, the tax benefits of real estate investing are absent, but the money to purchase is there.